A Tara Shores thriller
Rick Chesler
Copyright © 2011, © 2012 Rick Chesler. All rights reserved.
Cover art © 2011 Stanley Tremblay
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Printed in the USA.
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For Finn
Acknowledgments
To Stan Tremblay for his outstanding work on the cover art.
Special thanks to Thomas Gustafson for his help with coding a secret message inside this book.
And to those of you who have supported and interacted with this author online, know that I appreciate each and every one of you.
In wildness is the preservation of the world
-Henry David Thoreau
THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
Part I: Discovery
… ACCC1TTAT...
Offshore Waikiki Beach, island of Oahu, Hawaii
9:37 A.M., Sunday, June 14
Down here an hour already. Where is this damn thing?
Dave Turner took another giant underwater leap as he considered the question. A puff of sand billowed from the impact his foot made as it landed on the seabed. A trail of similar disturbances marked his path for about a hundred feet behind him, the limit of his visibility. He still wasn’t used to the heavy boots, but he managed to avoid falling face first into the sandy bottom by extending for balance the metal detector held in his right arm.
Although Dave was an experienced scuba diver, the recent marine biology graduate was unfamiliar with the equipment he now used. Feeling the tug of the yellow air line from the boat anchored above, Dave was reminded that he wasn’t scuba diving. He was practicing a form of commercial diving where air was fed to him through a hose from above, rather than carried on his back in a tank. The lead-soled boots kept him upright while he walked along the bottom, sweeping the metal detector in front of him as he went. In his left hand he held a tool known as a sand scoop - a metal pole with a mesh basket welded on one end, for digging objects from the sand.
So far, Dave had found a whole lot of nothing. Not even junk. He was seventy-five feet down, far off the beach. There was not much boat traffic here, the nearest harbor being a couple of miles away. The outrigger canoes, kayakers and paddleboards were much closer to shore.
Dave gave one sharp tug on the rope that wound around his air tether. The rope was connected to a bell on his support boat’s deck, the low-tech signal to his employer to give him more slack. The water gradually became deeper as he walked out to sea away from the boat.
The headphones he wore, which delivered the metal detector’s audio signals to his ears, also took some getting used to. But after a while Dave grew to like the cumbersome new gear. It was not unlike being a moonwalker with some exotic space equipment, he imagined, trudging down a gentle slope that he knew eventually led into the serious abyss that was the mid-Pacific Ocean.
Dave felt the air line slacken, increasing his freedom of movement. thought.At least the old guy hasn’t fallen asleep up there, Dave
It wasn’t a comfortable notion. He was alone on the bottom of the ocean, his feet encased in lead boots. For whatever reason, if a problem should develop, he couldn’t swim to the surface as he could with the more mobile fins and air tank used in scuba. He had to be lifted to the world above in what they called The Elevator—a stainless steel rectangular contraption that resembled a shark cage, but without cross-bars on the sides.
When he was ready to ascend, Dave was to ring the bell three times, and his boss on the boat would lower the elevator. Dave would then step onto the metal platform and ring the bell again, at which time his boss would start the electric winch that would crank him back up, pausing for decompression at a shallower depth. The system had worked flawlessly on his last two dives. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that there was a lot to potentially go wrong with this situation, but by thinking of the money he was making, he pushed these thoughts aside.
Dave forced his mind to stay on the detector as he swung it back and forth across the sandy seafloor. He recalled his recent on-the-job technical training and the importance of keeping the instrument’s search coil level above the bottom, at just the right distance. Until he’d met his new boss, Dave had never even touched a metal detector, much less an underwater metal detector, but after a few training sessions in shallow water he’d found that the machine wasn’t difficult to use. In fact, he’d been surprised to discover that he wasn’t even the only guy combing the sands of the world’s most famous beach for the valuables dropped by hordes of jewelry-laden tourists.
He’d dug up all the practice targets his boss had thrown into a shallow lagoon for him to find—nails, pop tops, costume jewelry—and after that he’d even ventured out into the surf and pulled up a gold chain. When his new boss said he could keep the find as a bonus, Dave began to wonder what saint he had to thank for this fortuitous turn of events.
Only a month earlier, he had graduated college with no job prospects and nothing in the bank. Students were always cash-strapped, and living in Hawaii was anything but cheap. Dedicated more to surfing and beach life in the last five years than to his studies, Dave was far from an academic star. In fact, he’d barely managed to graduate. The Hawaii job market being what it was, Dave had resigned himself to the reality that soon he would have to return to the mainland—the real world—in order to make a living.
To say Dave had been interested when he saw the job advertisement for a certified diver with a background in marine biology was an understatement. He was taken by surprise when he received an offer of employment a day after responding to the ad.
The gig was only temporary, his new employer was quick to point out. Still, the money would buy Dave at least another three months in the islands for what promised to be only a few days’ work. Three more months of surfing, diving and partying…
The job’s objective was simple. His new boss was a rich old guy who had lost the wedding ring he’d had for thirty years while out fishing on his boat. He had to get the thing back or his wife would kill him. He had to at least make an undeniably serious effort, he’d told Dave.
But he was not a diver. “I like being on the water, kid, not in it,” he was fond of saying. To this end, he had acquired all of the equipment someone would need to do the job, and then put out the ad for the right person.
He’d wanted a marine biologist because he needed someone who would be comfortable working in the water alone, who wouldn’t be surprised by much and who might be able to put local knowledge of ocean currents and shore erosion patterns to practical use. If there was one thing Dave had done a lot of since moving to Hawaii, it was diving. He’d logged more time underwater than in the classroom, a balance which was reflected in his grade point average. Marine biology, Dave had discovered, wasn’t really about fish and dolphins and exotic locales — it was more about chemistry, genetics and statistics.
But Mr. Johnson, his new boss, had been suitably impressed. Over a couple of Kona lagers at Duke’s on the beach, Dave had convinced the old man that he was right for the job.
He had started actually searching for the ring
two days ago. He began by working a grid pattern based around the GPS coordinates Johnson said he took only minutes after he noticed the ring had slipped his finger. Probably because he’d been rubbing suntan oil on his wife, he’d said with a wink. But the elusive ring had refused to make itself known to the detector.
Day number two, yesterday, had been equally fruitless.
Sometime during one of his lagoon training sessions, it had occurred to Dave that if he was the only one down here, then how would Johnson know he wouldn’t just pocket the ring if he found it and not say anything? But his new employer had thought of this also. That’s why he offered Dave a hefty finder’s bonus if he actually delivered him the ring, in addition to the substantial wages just for trying. “Heck” Johnson had said, “I’ll even pay you a nice bonus for anything you bring up that’s not obvious trash. All I really want to do is show my wife that I’m trying to find this ring. So you just bring stuff up to the boat and let me look at it.”
That finder’s fee, Dave thought now, as he trundled along the ocean floor, would allow him to remain in Hawaii even longer. Funny how much sentimental value people could place on things, Dave thought, turning to look at a green sea turtle gliding above him. He himself had had a number of girlfriends, but was still nowhere close to getting married.
Find the damn ring, he thought, and went back to work. With the boat floating silently at anchor above, Dave found it eerily quiet knowing there were so many thousands of people just a half mile away on the beach. A pair of spotted eagle rays soared majestically out of sight ahead of him.
Dave was thinking how he wished that this job wasn’t only a temporary situation, and that over the next couple of months he would find a way to stay permanently in the islands, when the tone in his earphones suddenly rose in pitch.
He stopped walking.
He moved the search coil a foot to his right. The tone leveled back to normal. He swept the disc back over the spot to his left. He was rewarded with an immediate and decisive pitch increase.
Target detected!
He couldn’t see anything unusual about the suspect patch of sand at his feet. There were a couple of seashells—tiger cowries, Dave couldn’t help but identify—and some bits of coral rubble, but he couldn’t see any obvious metal.
Dave gripped the sand scoop. He was about to bring the scoop down when he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a splash from above…
Followed shortly by his support boat’s engine starting up.
Dave looked up in time to see something falling toward the bottom. The object was limned against the tropical sun’s intense late morning rays, but Dave could see that whatever it was, it was going to land not far from him. About twenty feet.
Was old Johnson playing some kind of practical joke on him, dropping something for him to see? Was it something that would help him with the ring, extra equipment, maybe?
Dave's eyes followed the object’s path to the bottom, taking a bit to readjust to the dimmer ambient light at depth. The thing was going to land closer to him than he had thought. Maybe ten feet away.
And then he recognized it. The goofy aloha shirt Johnson had been wearing. His mind even identified the necklace his boss always wore, the classic Hawaiian bone fishing hook.
Johnson!
With a spreading rash of panic, Dave realized that his boss now lay unmoving on the bottom.
He ditched his detecting gear and began a slow-as-molasses run toward the immobile figure.
From five feet away Dave could see that Johnson’s throat had been savagely cut. Blood drifted from his open neck. His eyes were vacant and lifeless. His curly mop of gray hair stood on end in the current. He wore a belt strewn with lead weights, meant for divers.
Somewhere in the back of his mind Dave registered that the boat had begun to accelerate, its engine increasing in cadence and pitch.
Suddenly he was knocked off his feet as the craft sped away, severing his air hose.
He struggled to his feet in great heaps of sand clouds and a gush of bubbles that poured from his disconnected hose. The exertion of getting to an upright position left him wanting for breath.
But he knew that none was available.
He considered yanking off his boots and bolting for the surface. He fought the impulse.
The boots were not designed for quick removal. It would take at least a minute to get them both off. And then he would face an eighty foot swim to the surface, without the propulsion of fins.
Eyes fixed on Johnson’s inert form, Dave took the few remaining steps toward his dead boss.
… TTGT2TTCG…
Waikiki, island of O'ahu, Hawaii
9:45 A.M.
Special Agent Tara Shores steeled herself for the climate shock as she stepped out of her air conditioned Crown Vic into all 88 humid degrees of the finest tropical heat Hawaii had to offer. A year after being transferred from the Los Angeles field office, she still hadn't acclimated. It wasn't so much the heat, she liked to tell friends back on the mainland, but the constant sameness of the weather—the near lack of weather. Excepting the occasional storm, almost every day looked the same as the next.
And not just the weather, either, Tara fumed as she sidestepped past an awestruck tourist marveling from behind his camera about the “quality of light at this latitude.” Her Hawaii cases thus far had been boringly straightforward. Lots of drug cases—crystal meth in particular, a few ordinary bank robberies, a couple of auto theft rings (Tara had been surprised to find such a prevalence of car theft on a small island where vehicles couldn’t be driven very far, but learned that they were disassembled and shipped internationally), and a few fugitive arrests. Even without the nationally publicized murder case which was the catalyst for her transfer, she felt like her L.A. casework had been much more interesting and varied.
It hadn't been Tara's idea to come to Hawaii. Barely recovered from a long-time case of hydrophobia, she now found herself living on the most physically remote island on the planet, thousands of miles from the nearest continents. After solving a high profile L.A. murder, she had been told by Bureau higher-ups that she was being considered for Assistant Special Agent In Charge of the L.A. Field Office once the long-time ASAIC retired that year. A slightly more junior agent—a man, Shores noted with disgust—had been picked for the job, and she had been given the ASAIC position at Honolulu. Transfers were commonplace in the FBI, and it didn’t bother Tara to relocate, but to her mind it seemed like the Bureau was trying to lower her visibility after receiving so much attention. Honolulu was but a mere FBI outpost compared to the urban command center maintained in L.A.
As Tara emerged from the pack of visitors and stared up at the skyscraper set back from the sidewalk, she focused on the task ahead while she made for the building's lobby. It was a condotel, a building containing both hotel rooms and condominiums. Unlike the tourists and the residents around her, she was here to work.
This particular job was the result of months of research into a suspected real estate scam. An unknown former—perhaps even current—employee of the building was suspected of using key copies to gain access to vacant units in order to pose as a real estate agent to “rent” them out to unsuspecting clients. After dispensing bogus information to collect application fees and sometimes a deposit, they simply disappeared, leaving the legitimate owner to deal with the aftermath of ripped-off would-be renters and buyers. An almost identical scam had been reported in Las Vegas—Hawaii's “ninth island” as it was sometimes called due to its popularity with the locals—and Tara had spearheaded a cooperative project with the Vegas field office to take action and compare notes.
Tara passed through the lobby with its walls of volcanic stone, high ceiling fans and assortment of worn rattan furniture. A mixture of fake and real potted plants provided a modicum of ambience. A young security guard manned a desk in front of a discreet bank of closed circuit monitors. Tara had seen him here on previous visits. He winked at her as she crossed the room, n
ot because he knew of her official capacity, but because he, like many other men, found her slim figure, stylishly cropped black hair and piercing green eyes to be attractive. The lobby was crowded enough that both the wink and the Asian man extinguishing a cigarette in a potted fern went unnoticed.
Tara strode to a bank of elevators. She entered one and pressed the button for floor 43, the highest except for the penthouse. After a ride up that was shorter than the wait for the elevator itself, she stepped into the hallway of 43. Playing the part of a prospective condo buyer from the mainland, Tara clutched an advertisement for the unit and slowly made her way down the hall. She found the unit without any trouble, door open with a few people walking out. She heard one mutter “Way overpriced,” as she passed. Tara continued down the hall until she reached the advertised condo. Her ad claimed it was for sale by a reputable agency, but Tara knew the con-artists often used fake ads to lure their victims. It wouldn't take long to figure out if this was a scam or not, Tara thought as she stepped through the doorway into the condominium.
Three prospective buyers milled about the place while a realtor, a Caucasian woman in her fifties, hovered behind the kitchen counter over a stack of brochures. Tara recognized the woman from an earlier canvassing and knew her to be legitimate, although the realtor had no idea Tara was FBI or that she was under investigation at all. Tara held her ad up to the realtor, doubting she would recognize her from previous visits, each of which was made wearing a different casual disguise—sometimes she wore a hat, sometimes not, sometimes oversize sunglasses, sometimes she was accompanied by a male agent posing as her husband. Tara disliked this type of role-playing since she herself was single in real life, but her dedication to the job led her to do whatever it took to solve a case.
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